


Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell)

by Caia (Caius)



Category: Captain America, Marvel
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-05
Updated: 2009-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caius/pseuds/Caia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cap is intrigued by this new "MySpace" thing that kids today are using!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Conversations Cap Had About MySpace (That Weren't With Kat Farrell)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://harmonyangel.livejournal.com/profile)[**harmonyangel**](http://harmonyangel.livejournal.com/) for betaing and encouraging me to write this. Any errors, particularly those MySpace related, are my own.

1\. Sharon Carter

"Sharon, do you know anything about MySpace?" Steve asked very earnestly and entirely out of the blue.

Sharon managed, with effort, not to inhale her coffee. As a trained SHIELD agent, she was very good at keeping a straight face. And yet somehow, Steve Rogers _always_ managed to get under her skin. "Um. Not much. I'm afraid I'm about ten years too old to really answer that question for you, Steve. Why do you ask?"

"I hear there's _crime_ on there. Serious crime." Steve looked, if possible, even more earnest. His blue eyes burned into hers with serious concern.

No shit, Sharon didn't say. "Well, yes, there's crime anywhere." Sharon shrugged. "Computer crime isn't really my department, though, I'm afraid. I'm sure SHIELD has some of their tech people on it, but we're not the FBI. We don't publicize that sort of work, so field agents like me don't hear much."

"Yeah, I suppose not." Steve frowned. "Have you ever used it? I mean, not as a SHIELD agent, just as you?"

"'Fraid not. I don't really spend much time in front in a computer, and SHIELD machines are hell for doing any sort of ordinary internet stuff. If you want to search classified data, fine, but try to load a Youtube clip and it's all with the security warnings and blocked content." She paused. "Although that time the SHIELD computer linked me to a theater-quality version of the whole movie." And that would be how Sharon saw all the movies she had time to see these days (which wasn't very many). "It was fun, but it's useless for figuring out what normal people see on the internet."

Steve sighed. "I guess maybe we both need to get out more."

"Speak for yourself," said Sharon, although from long experience she had her doubts about whether _Steve_ trying to get a life was any better an idea than Sharon doing so herself. "As I said--no one my age really needs to know much about MySpace yet anyway." Thank god. "Certainly not anyone your age."

2\. Tony Stark

"So Tony, what do you know about MySpace?"

Tony looked up from his work bench for a second. This was not the question he was _expecting_ from Steve this week by a long shot. Some sort of case? Usually he detected the internet ones long before Steve did. "Terrible network. Everyone uses it anyway. Stark Enterprises has a much better one, but Murdoch got the numbers, damn him. And people want to be where their friends are, no matter what sort of shitty interface they have to put up with. I could get more technical on you," but it would be wasted on both MySpace and you, "but those are the basics. "

"It's a good place to get in touch with people, then?" Steve, as happened fairly regularly, seized on the entirely wrong part of Tony's point.

"You could say that." He tightened the screw on one of his new robot's limbs. Almost there--! "Mostly kids, musicians, that sort of people." Not people who knew much about computers, in other words, but no need to put it _that_ way for the current audience. "Artists network there too." Speaking of the current audience. Was Steve wanting to get back into comics art or something? "Do you want me to make you one? I could work up something reasonably tasteful and user-friendly." The other robot arm twitched and Tony adjusted another screw. "You'd hardly know you were on MySpace."

"I'm not sure. You don't exactly give it a ringing endorsement." Steve paced, avoiding the various pieces of machine with super-soldierly grace. "I do want to keep in touch with the people, though, and it's been a long time since the old Captain America Hotline's really been active."

"How about getting in on the ground floor of a new thing, then?" Tony picked up his screwdriver and pointed it at Cap. "I could jazz up the old Starktech social networking system, put you on it, and see if the two of us couldn't make it the new and improved MySpace." It'd take a lot of jazzing up--he hadn't updated the old interface in a few years. But it'd be a fun project, and it was always fun to win one over Rupert Murdoch.

Steve frowned. "You know Captain America can't do corporate endorsements, Tony."

"If you got a MySpace, you'd be giving the ad money and publicity to News Corp. instead. At least I'm someone you know--I'd have to look at the figures, but I could see about running it not-for-profit for you, even." Tony grinned, numbers and programming running through his head, the robot in his hands half-forgotten. "It'd be one way of solving the 'how to make money out of Web 2.0' problem."

"The what problem?" Tony gathered breath to try to explain. Steve added hastily. "Never mind. I'll get back to you?"

"Cool." Tony went back to work.

3\. Nick Fury

"Hi, Steve, what can I do for ya?" Nick said out of his giant screen on the wall.

"Do you have any information on MySpace, Nick?" If one was very good at reading Steve--and Nick was--one might have seen a slightly embarrassed and long-suffering expression through his usual earnest sincerity. Nick grinned to himself. Captain America asking about MySpace? Why didn't SHIELD have the background on _that_ one yet? He'd have to check who was responsible for _that_ li'l oversight.

"Sure, we got all sorts." Nick turned to yell at an agent out of view, "Get MySpace information for the Captain!" and then turned back. "I don' go in for that much m'self, a'course. Much too old, and I know how to delegate. What are _you_ wantin' it for?"

Steve shrugged. "I'm trying to keep up with the times. And looking for ways to keep in touch with the people."

"Well, that's a noble goal, at least." The agent handed a data disk to Nick, who acknowledged with a nod and a thanks and an order to everyone to stop gawking at Captain America and get back to work, ya goldbricks! You'd think they'd never seen a gorgeous blond all-American superhero before. Sure, Nick could afford to take some time off from savin' the world to help his friend out, but there's no call to have the whole of SHIELD command lallygagging like that. They were in the middle of checking out an important lead on HYDRA.

"Nick..." Steve gave him a disapproving look.

"Don' look at me like that, kid, I was a sergeant while you were still a scrawny li'l kid in art school and if the world is run over by the hordes of HYDRA because _these_ scrawny little art school kids can' stop staring atcha, it might just be beyond _your_ superhero skills to save our bacon." Behind Nick, a room full of SHIELD agents paused to gawk _again_, this time at their SHIELD director dressing down Captain America. "And I said: GET BACK TO WORK, YA GOLDBRICKS!"

Steve sighed. No dealing with Nick in this mood.

"Any rate, Steve, here's the basic SHIELD MySpace dossier. It's also got info on some other stuff that might be 'more palatable to the old folks', or so the techies around here say." Nick paused, and glanced behind him a second. "But if you really wanna build up your hotline again, you're gonna want your own server. Gimme a call and SHIELD'll set you up, give ya somethin' much more secure and user friendly than any 'o that private sector bullshit." And give Nick a nice li'l line in to Steve's activities. It'd save all sorts of man-hours keeping track of 'im, which would make it _more_ than worth the investment.

"Thank you." Steve downloaded and printed out the information. It was, he was gratified to notice, written in plain English; apparently Nick had given him the SHIELD technical folks' equivalent of MySpace for Dummies. "I don't know if I want to be working for SHIELD again, but thank you for the offer."

"No problem, anything for an old battle buddy. Now I gotta go or the folks round here'll set the place on fire." The screen cut off.

4\. Rachel Leighton

Rachel hadn't been next on Steve's list of people to ask, or even on it at all, but she was a bit younger and much hipper than most of the people Steve knew. So when they ran into each other one day at a crime scene (where Steve was nearly almost entirely sure that Diamondback's original idea had been to prevent the crime, not aid it), and Rachel talked him into going for coffee afterwards...well, it seemed natural to ask. "Do you have a MySpace?"

"Of course!" said Rachel. Than she paused. "Do _you_?" It was extremely odd to picture, and yet oddly appealing. Images of a red-white-and-blue MySpace account playing the Star-Spangled Banner flashed before her eyes. Or maybe it would play forties big band music? Forties big band versions of the Star-Spangled Banner?

"No. Not yet anyway."

"You should get one! They're fun. You can put up all sorts of musics and pictures, and keep track of the people you know, make contacts..." Halfway through the sentence, Rachel realized there could be a problem here. Her list of MySpace friends flashed before her eyes. MySpace had been a great way to reconnect with her old Serpent Society friends. She was reformed now, sure, and so were a bunch of the others but still...it'd been so hard to get back into touch, and having Steve there with the rest of them--that could only be trouble for everyone.

Dammit. And she'd been looking forward to having a way to keep in touch with him more reliably. "Drop me a note when you get one and I'll add you!" Please don't ask what my screen name is, she thought to herself. Please don't ask.

Fortunately, Steve wasn't quite that net-savvy. Or that eager to be her MySpace friend. "Sure." He grinned that beautiful grin of his and Rachel was almost sorry she'd stopped chasing him. Almost.

"Great." Now to make up a new account. "Rachelisdefinitelynotasupervillain"? She'd come up with something. And she bet she could talk Cleo and Tanya into making 'clean' accounts and friending her there.

5\. Sam Wilson

Sam _was_ the next person on Steve's list, and it rather surprised him that it'd taken him so long to think of it. It was Sam's job to keep track of the youth of today; surely he'd know.

When Steve asked, Sam raised an eyebrow, but he said, "Sure. Want to come over and take a look at mine?" and in less than an hour they were sitting in front of Sam's PC as he loaded up the website.

Steve blinked at the flashing banner ad. "Don't you mind having ads like that on your page?"

Sam looked up at it and sighed. "Yes, but MySpace has to make its money and I have to be where the kids are and the kids are on MySpace. Although it's surprising how much you don't notice the banner ads after you get used to them." Sam had gotten so used to the whole MySpace set up that he hadn't thought through what it would be like for Steve, seeing it for--apparently--the very first time. His page suddenly seemed much gaudier and more poorly designed. He really hoped that the banner ad wouldn't display anything embarrassing while Steve was looking...

Steve looked doubtful. "I like the pictures of Redwing in the background."

Sam grinned. Now that was something he was actually proud of! "Isn't it beautiful? One of my kids made it--Marcus Elliott. I keep meaning to introduce the two of you, actually..." Redwing cawed derisively from the other end of the room. Sam laughed. "Redwing doesn't like it very much, I'm afraid. It's as a human sees him, not as a falcon does. But I do." He pulled up a new window. "Here's a better view of it. I can send you the image if you want, and I'm definitely going to tell Marcus you liked it. Maybe then I can finally get you two artists together." Sometime. It had been two years that Sam had been trying; matching up the schedule of a busy superhero with a busy teenage artist would have been a challenge even if he'd been putting his full attention to it.

"That'd be great." Suddenly Steve jumped, as the computer started to emit birdsong.

"Ah, that would be MySpace." Sam returned to the browser window. "One of its odder features." Redwing cawed again.

"Is Redwing responding to the song?" Steve said.

"No, he's used to MySpace by now. He's actually laughing at you for being afraid of chickadees." Sam turned around. "Redwing, you're one to talk. You spent three weeks complaining that the computer sounded like something good to eat and wasn't."

Steve grinned. "Why does MySpace play birdsong anyway?"

"You can make it play any audio file, actually. Most people do music. But I've got to keep up my reputation as the neighborhood birdwatcher somehow." Sam grinned. "I switch 'em around every week or so. Sometimes I put in something really exotic. And I always put in a description in my profile. It's very educational!"

Steve looked at Sam's profile. "You've got a whole lot of information up there."

"Yeah," said Sam. "But it's all public anyway. And I want people to be able to find me when they need me, and that means having it all where the kids can find me. Even if it does mean I get some calls after hours that aren't strictly necessary." Sam was not going to explain the concept of "drunk-dialing" to Steve unless it was absolutely necessary.

"That's good." Steve paused. "Do you think I should get one? To get in touch with more people?"

Sam raised both eyebrows. "Well, I don't know. It's one thing for me--not a whole lot of people _want_ to get a hold of either Sam Wilson or the Falcon, compared to how many want Captain America's help." And no, Sam's not resentful about this. Not at all. And he will move on quickly before Steve started talking about how, really, Sam is just as good a hero as Steve is, and it all got terribly awkward. "Not to mention the effect on your image, and on MySpace's image, if you did so. Updating the Captain America hotline isn't such a bad idea, but maybe not on MySpace. Maybe get a website of your own?" He paused. "Although...some public figures do make MySpaces and Facebooks and things work for them. But not being one, I don't really have any advice for that."

"Well." Steve eyed Sam's MySpace critically. The birdsong had cycled around and was starting over for the third time, and the color scheme was distressingly hard to read. The banner ad was advertising some sort of dating service. "Maybe I'll see if I can get myself my own webspace, and some people to run it. And the financing to run it..."

"Well, don't stress out over it, Steve. No one _expects_ you to be the hero of the new millennium." He grinned. "Although if you reestablish Stars and Stripes, I've got some kids that would be thrilled to help you out with the computer stuff."

"Thank you." Steve grinned, and looked quite firmly away from the computer. Images were swirling in front of his face; he really wasn't used to this. "And please do send me the picture of Redwing, and get me in touch with Marcus if you can. It was beautiful. And...I think painting is more my thing than MySpace, anyway."

"Definitely." Sam smiled at him. "But hey--let me know if you decide to get one anyway. I'll make sure to friend you right away. It'd be nice to have someone on my friends' list older than me..."


End file.
